NFL unlikely to take root in Canada

Mike Beamish, Vancouver Sun11.30.2012

A young fan watches the Buffalo Bills take take on the Pittsburgh Steelers at the Rogers Centre in Toronto in 2008. Rogers Media has been accused of overpricing NFL games in Toronto featuring the Buffalo Bills, resulting in the issuance of many complimentary tickets to ‘paper’ the stadium with enough fans.

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“Talk about the NFL coming to Canada scares me as a CFL fan. It would be the death knell for our league if the NFL set up in Toronto.” — Late B.C. Lions president Bob Ackles, in his biography, The Water Boy.

VANCOUVER — It has been five years since Bob Ackles enunciated his fear of an invasion into Canada by the National Football League. Yet, truth is, the reality of it happening seems just as distant now as it did in 2007, when the late B.C. Lions’ president wrote his football memoir, one year before his death.

The NFL probably will continue to maintain a foothold in southern Ontario. As far as stamping out the Canadian Football League with its heavy, hobnailed boot, however, a Stanley Cup for the Maple Leafs is a much more likely possibility, as improbable as that sounds.

“I know Bobby Ackles had some issues about the NFL coming to Canada,” said Greg Albrecht. “He was in a big flap about it in ’08. No one knew what to expect. Since then, there hasn’t been as much animosity about the game being played here. My feeling, initially, was that it wasn’t going to be so good for the CFL. That comes with not knowing about something before it happens. But, five years on, it really hasn’t impacted anybody.”

Albrecht is executive director for Bills in Toronto, and overseer of the next meaningful football game to be played at Rogers Centre, between the Buffalo Bills and Seattle Seahawks on Dec. 16. The game is the final instalment of a five-year agreement between Rogers Media and the Bills to play NFL games in Toronto and comes just three weeks after last Sunday’s 100th Grey Cup game between the Argonauts and Calgary Stampeders.

Albrecht was director of operations for the 2005 Grey Cup committee in Vancouver and later president of the Calgary organizing committee for the 2009 Grey Cup, when Ackles’ son, Scott, was president of the Stampeders. So Albrecht offers the perspective of being neither in the CFL-is-lame nor NFL-is-boring camps but a promoter of football in its three- or four-down forms.

“I’m a football fan, whether it’s CFL or NFL,” he said. “Obviously, I cut my teeth in the CFL. At the end of the day, it’s not about whether you’re wearing an NFL jersey or a CFL jersey, or an NHL jersey or MLS, it’s about entertainment, fan integration, the fan experience and what kind of legacy you leave behind. I don’t think one — CFL or NFL — is better than the other. Both have their attributes, both have their challenges.”

Albrecht’s current challenge is to fill Rogers Centre for the Bills-Seahawks’ game, knowing it falls soon after the iconic national exercise of the Grey Cup game and festival. Plus, Seattle doesn’t have the same allure for football fans in the Greater Toronto region as the ’Hawks would, say, for an appearance in BC Place Stadium. President Dennis Skulsky is on record opposing any NFL game in the Lions’ Den, even of the pre-season variety, though the Seahawks have expressed no intention of venturing beyond CenturyLink Field at any time.

“The Vancouver market versus the Toronto market is like apples to oranges, in terms of just population base,” Albrecht said. “I think, in Vancouver, if you had an NFL pre-season game up there, it may impact the market a little bit more than it would here.”

Ticket prices for the 100th Grey Cup ranged from $150 to $399, in the general range of what they were for the 99th a year earlier in Vancouver, where the tariff was between $156 and $436.

By contrast, admission to the Bills-Seahawks’ game starts at $45 and goes as high as $225 for a VIP ticket on the 50-yard line. In the past, Rogers Media was accused of being too aggressive in its price structure for the Bills in Toronto game, and the result was a profusion of comp tickets needed to “paper” the house. Despite the nearness to western New York — Toronto is only a 90-minute commute to Buffalo — many Bills fans were turned off not only by high ticket pricing but by the inertia and vastness of Rogers Centre itself, a common complaint of those who attend Argo home games. It just doesn’t have the same kinetic energy as outdoor games at Ralph Wilson Stadium.

As a value-added attraction, rapper Psy will gallop into Rogers Centre, South Korean cowboy style, for the halftime show, Albrecht said, with the assurance that he has scored a brilliant marketing coup. Psy, a.k.a. Park Jae Sang, is behind the YouTube video Gangnam Style and a global sensation surpassing Justin Bieber as the planet’s most-watched video artist.

Last Sunday, Bieber, the teen heartthrob from Stratford, Ont., and headliner of the Grey Cup halftime show, drew a mixed reaction from the capacity CFL crowd at Rogers Centre, many of whom came from a demographic more suited to aging rockers such as April Wine, Kim Mitchell and Burton Cummings.

Bieber-bashing is nothing new. But piling on the Biebs does reflect some of the challenges still facing the Argonauts to become more relevant in the Toronto market, especially with the under-30 crowd, Albrecht said, despite producing a festive Grey Cup week and something as rare as hen’s teeth in the city’s downtrodden sports scene — an actual championship.

“The Argos’ win, in the 100th Grey Cup game, has created great buzz,” he said. “They’ve got a great platform to promote ticket sales and brand awareness. But I think the work starts now. They have to be talking to those fans who are totally engaged now. They’ve got a fantastic opportunity.

“If they don’t build on that, and just expect people to hop on board their championship wagon, all that happened last week might be a wasted opportunity. If they don’t start working the phones, getting in touch with their former season ticket holders, and those who are on the fence, all that will be left is the memory of a great event.”

The future of the Bills in Toronto is also up in the air. But Albrecht is confident a new deal between Rogers Media and the NFL team will get done, which will allow more games at Rogers Centre for at least two more years. As for “sucking the lifeblood out of our league” as Bob Ackles once feared, Albrecht believes that’s unlikely to happen.

“I think the NFL has bigger fish to fry (a team in Los Angeles),” he said. “However, on just population numbers alone, Toronto would seem to be a good place to do it. From a population basis, that’s it. Not from a fan base standpoint. The two leagues can coexist. But what lies beyond this year, we don’t know.”

You hear this, and it’s fair to wonder if both the CFL and the NFL are thinking the same thing.

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